Public Movement: Emergency Routine

The performance Emergency Routine activates civil alliances that arise between bodies in moments of danger. Today, governments often debate the need for civic resilience and the biopolitical relationship between state and citizen is under scrutiny. The group Public Movement proposes a collective gathering that emerges from the shared practice of the movement of solidarity and state leadership. Together with five performers, the audience is invited to experience choreographies of care, imaginary and documented danger scenarios and staged evacuation states. Referring to the elusive hand of the state that reaches out and touches citizens under the guise of protection, Emergency Routine invites you to get carried away, to allow yourself to be physically touched and manipulated.
EmergencyRoutine is based on research into what is believed to be the world's largest peacetime evacuation exercise: Operation Stockholm 1961, an ambitious, unprecedented event in which 225,000 residents were ordered to flee their city in a fictitious emergency. Following actions in Stockholm, Rome and Tel Aviv, Public Movement will adapt the performance for a site- and context-specific version in Düsseldorf.

Public Movement functions as a performative research body that explores and stages political actions in public space. The collective investigates and creates public choreographies, forms of social order and overt and covert rituals. Since its foundation, Public Movement has been researching the rules, forces, actors and politics, identity formations and ritual systems that determine the dynamics of public life and public space.